Redraft leagues are the standard of the fantasy sports industry. Each year you get a fresh start at remembering you shouldn’t draft A.J. Pollock. Ever. You can draft whoever you want at your draft position or spend as much as your budget on whoever you want. But for me there is nothing more fun than a good long-term keeper league. Smart owners get to flex on their leaguemates by keeping players they selected deep in their drafts or picked up on a hunch. Keeper leagues are a great intermediate option between full-on redraft leagues and the craziness of a dynasty league.

Below you’ll find my keeper rankings for 2019. I’ve included each player’s age, position eligibility for the start of the 2019 season and any concerns I have about each player. Here’s what you’ll also see: I’m not high on starting pitchers. Too likely to suffer an injury and miss a large chunk of time. I’m not high on guys with less than two seasons of experience. I’ve seen sophomore slumps and prospect busts far too often. There are exceptions like Ronald Acuna who seem like a sure thing — but when it comes to Vlad Guerrero Jr. I prefer the wait and see approach. Plus, we really don’t know when he’ll even debut. Players over the age of 31 worry me — especially players whose value is speed dependent. I don’t want to keep a player whose decline is starting to begin. Injury prone players: duh. I’m not going to keep someone who can’t take the field.

When I was writing up the 2019 fantasy baseball rankings in December/January — or simply Janember — I couldn’t imagine what February and March had in store — ya know, Farch. Players come out of nowhere in Spring Training to cause us to stop and take notice. Of course, I just told you to ignore Spring Training stats. This is true; Spring Training stats are a lot like my pants; they are propped up by a small sample size. However, or howmever if you’re trying to sound smart, it is important to stay on top of guys who are fighting, and winning, everyday jobs. Of course, with my Oracle third eye, I saw all of this back in Janember, but my third eye got into a spat with my first and second eye at the optometrist’s office. My first and second eye were taking the eye test and my third eye was like, “ECFYE–Yo, this shizz is way too easy,” and then my 2nd and 3rd eyes were like, “You’re like the Felicity Huffman of eyes and your cheating is going to have us incorrectly placed with better lenses than we should have.” It got ugly, and they refused to work together to type up this post for a few weeks. Finally, they all came to their senses — the sense of sight, specifically — hashed it out at a Friendly’s over a Fribble and we’re all good. Never the hoo! With Farch turning into a full-fledged March, it’s time for me to let you in on some thoughts and changes to the 2019 fantasy baseball rankings and what they could mean for your drafts:

I’m here to talk about prospects. I applied for this position thinking it was a sports writing gig for the Philadelphia Inquirer, but I woke up in (possibly) Grey’s basement chained to a cot with a copy of Bill James’s handbook lying on the floor. A slot in the door opened and a voice (possibly mustached) asked, “Do you know anything about prospects?”. My reply was, “I know enough not to count on them, but I can’t help myself”. The voice on the other side of the wall chuckled. I heard the sound of a knife being sharpened. “This won’t hurt a bit,” he said.

The mystery is finally solved. That’s right…if you’ve ever been roofied…look no further than our fearless leader – the FML. He has a kidney collection that would make Hannibal blush. Here are the prospects that I might actually draft in 2019 redrafts…enjoy! And…be careful!

What an absolute trip this offseason has been, huh? Emphasis on ‘has been,’ and hyphenated. And trip as in “catch one’s foot on something and stumble or fall or other Macy Gray lyrics.” And ‘trip’ might actually be a misspelling of ‘drip.’ To recap, what an absolute drip this offseason has-been, huh? Players have already reported and Manny Machado is only now signing and Bryce Harper still hasn’t, said the man who likes to point out the obvious. Obvious Man continued, “I need oxygen to breathe.” Shut up, Obvious Man! Yesterday, the Padres signed Manny Machado to a 10-year, $300 million contract. We should’ve seen this coming all along. After all, San Diego is the world’s most languid city. Also, remember all those people saying Machado would sign with the White Sox, due to Yonder Alonso signing there and being his brother-in-law? I mean, a guy doesn’t want to be with his in-laws? No kidding!

Now Machado will be in the cozy position of hitting between Ian Kinsler and Eric Hosmer. Does he just prefer to hit in garbage lineups? Was Balty-more (how I say it) not bad enough for him? What an absolute shizzshow this 1st round has become. In the top 10 for 2019 fantasy baseball, I’ve moved Machado down to another tier as the 2nd tier in the top 10 becomes increasingly barren. “Acuña or Trea Turner or die,” as my bumper sticker I’m manufacturing says. Petco isn’t the ‘terrible’ park everyone has made it out to be in past years, i.e. Petco isn’t for the birds and is not a dog of a park or–Fill in your own damn animal pun! It’s still makes me shudder hard at thinking of hitting in front of Hosmer, but, as previously mentioned on the aforementioned tip, hitting in the Orioles’ lineup wasn’t amazing either and Machado did fine for many years. I did lower his projections in the top 10, and I’m now way more tentative on him. Anyway, here’s what else I saw for fantasy baseball this offseason:

PSYCH! Before getting into the post, we have an announcement:

Razzball Introduces An Ad-Free Option

I know, I know, I know, but you love seeing ads for “Kate Hudson Beauty Secrets” that then lead you to a free Amazon gift card which is actually an Eastern European man living in Nigeria who managed to clone your DNA from your IP address and just slept with your wife using the Amazon Gift Card Clone, who goes by the name, Tommy. I love those ads too! They are terrific! However, and this is going to come as a shock to some of you, there’s people who don’t appreciate the IP clone illegal download software ads that sleep with your wife. I know, shocker! For those people, Razzball is introducing an ad-free option. As Rudy tells me, direct people to the Tools Subscription page and they can figure it out from there. I have my doubts, but what better way to prove me wrong? The ad-free subscription runs for 250 days — a Jewish calendar year! — and is only for one sport. There is now a Log In in the top menu for people too, so if you’re a subscriber, there’s no more need to email Rudy or I asking, “Hey, I bought the subscriptions and I can’t figure out where to log in? Is it at the log in page?” Wait until we introduce the “Grey comes to your house and just operates your computer for you” option. Anyway, here’s the roundup:

The best 2019 fantasy baseball team is a misnomer. Thankfully, none of us know what misnomer means. Sounds to me like someone tentatively wants to date the Travelocity Gnome’s daughter, “Miss Gnome, er, you wanna grab some boba and chill?” Miss Gnome brushes back her hair and bats her eyelashes that are almost as long as her two-and-half foot body, “I’d love to,” but her voice is high-pitched, which is a turn-off, so you cancel plans with her repeatedly until she gets the hint. Sorry, Miss Gnome, I like my women’s voices low like their stature. Any hoo! So the title is a bit of a superlative. What was I gonna say, “The Mostly Kinda Good Fantasy Baseball Team?” You’ll get over your scoffing; I have faith in you. This is the best 2019 fantasy baseball team that I can put together when drafting from my top 100 for 2019 fantasy baseball and top 500 for 2019 fantasy baseball. Honestly, I could draft another 25 teams from those lists, and they’d all be different, but equally terrific… Well, one of the twenty-five would only be sorta terrific, but it would be really hard to tell which one that is. If I took Adalberto Mondesi in the 2nd round, everything after would change. If I took Javier Baez in the 1st round, everything after would change. I’ve previously gone over my 2019 fantasy baseball draft prep for the first few rounds and pitchers pairings. For this exercise, I’m taking Trea Turner first, because, well, people complain I always did this post by taking Mike Trout first, so I’m switching it up, like when you combover right instead of left. Until pick 100, I’m taking one guy somewhere in every fifteen picks. It would be nice if I was in a league where someone drafted Scherzer and deGrom in the first two rounds and I was able to take Bryce Harper in the 2nd round (which is very likely), but since Treat Urner and him are in my first 14 picks, according to the rules I’ve set up for myself, I can’t take them both. Then, as we all know, once you get into the 100s, there’s wide gaps between ADP and where players are actually taken. People tend to look at team need over value. So for this exercise, once I get to pick #101, I’m going to pick two players every twenty picks. Finally, because there is so much latitude in the last 300, I gave myself free reign to fill up my team. Throughout the draft, I also gave myself the ability to reach to a lower draft pick, but not reach forward. Or reach around, if you’re feeling frisky. It should still be my ideal team… Or not. Let’s see, shall we? Bee tee dubya, this team is a 12-team, 5×5, one catcher, 5 OFs, MI, CI, 1 UT, 9 P, 3 bench, just like the Razzball Commenter Leagues (go sign up). Anyway, here’s the best 2019 fantasy baseball team:

“Has it always been this way? Where we just f***in’ tell everybody everything? I’m f***in’ sick of this s***!” No ,that’s not me talking about social media (although that’s pretty much how I feel). Those quotes are from former Reds manager Bryan Price’s epic tirade during a post-game press conference. He famously dropped 77 f-bombs after a reporter basically asked him if Tucker Barnhart was available. Whoops! As a Philly fan I can respect that kind of passionate potty mouth as well as the frustration. There’s some hope for this rebuilding Reds club in 2019 though. And at least part of the optimism should stem from its solid minor league system.

I don’t pay much attention to Spring Training Statistics. You never know who the statistics are coming against. Baseball-Reference did, however, have an amazing tool last year that attempted to quantify the quality of opposing pitchers or batters faced during spring training games on a scale from 1-10 with 10 being MLB talent and 1-3 being high A to low A level. This tool is great, but it averages all the Plate Appearances or batters faced. You would still need a deeper dive to see if your stud prospect smacked a donger off of Chris Sale or off of your kid’s future pony league baseball coach. So what should we watch for in March when we’re starved for the crack of the bat? Ignore “best shape of their life” stories and Spring Training statistical leaderboards. Pay attention to injuries and lineup construction and position battles! Also pay attention to where Bryce Harper and Manny Machado sign… Note that those two signings can instantly eliminate some of the position battles detailed herein.

Ditka once hit a HR off Sandy Koufax, took a HR away from Hank Aaron, and was called the best defensive CF of all time by Willie Mays. Ditka could’ve been the greatest baseball player of all time, but he decided it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else be the GOAT in 2 sports. There was no velocity reading on Ditka because the means to measure that level of speed did not exist in the 60s.

With this week’s helping of sausage, the Ditka dudes deep dive on Yoan Moncada to see if the former top prospect is worth his current 158 ADP. B_Don and Donkey Teeth also take a look at Brian Dozier and Rougned Odor to evaluate their bounce back potential at different points in their respective careers. After the profiles, the guys discuss some later options at the position that could be steals in your draft. Come and get your sausage here!